Why the BSG finale pissed me off.
And I was going to say – disappointed me – which is true. But I’m actually pissed off about it. Just the last hour.
Here’s why:
*It’s not the (in my view) cheaping out in terms of resolving stuff for characters – I didn’t need that much resolution.
It’s because this show was so great because it was (in my view) about how we – individuals and communities – deal with ourselves in both mundane and extreme situations. These folks are put in this incredible, anomic (sorry, I like sociology) situation. They then have to navigate things like: how do we organize ourselves? How do we decide what is right (like airlocking, torture, inter-special relationships, forgiveness)? What is wrong (abortion, airlocking, torture, etc.)? How do we come to terms with what we and “the other” have done to ourselves, our society, etc.?
To me, this show was never REALLY about technology.
So then we come to a finale, where the “resolution” comes about through:
-un-grounded anti-urbanism. (Lee: let’s not build a city, let’s instead spread people out and start over from scratch). Really? Was urbanism the problem we’ve been wrestling with all this time? So what we need to do, then, is destroy the remaining bonds of community and commonality we may have forged over the past 4 years? Because rugged individualism is ACTUALLY superior to any form of community?
-a bizarre sense of how a return to a pastoral society would prevent any new social ills, and heal wounds of existing ones. Let’s all return to hunting and gathering, because the mode of production is the only problem humanity has faced. That makes me sound insufficiently Marxist perhaps (and I don’t want to be insufficiently Marxist) – but I CANNOT believe that after grappling with these bigger questions, the solution is in turning back the hands of time.
THEN the bizarro future vision (with Chip!Six and Chip!Baltar) indicating that trouble looms, because these blasted human/cylon folks have had the audacity to regroup and industrialize, form cities and think about robots. So that DANGER then is painted as inevitable human progress leads to inevitable disaster; OR the danger is averted because of our BLOOD. Not because of our decisions, but because we’re now half human half Cylon? Either explanation is distasteful to me.
I feel burned.